Awesome!

Leave it to our lame duck president, the well-known wordsmith George W. Bush, to come up with the perfect description of Barack Obama's victory last night: Awesome! It is indeed, and as I watched the returns come in last night I was frequently wrung out emotionally.

The evening wasn't all fun, though. I was getting a little worried as it was well past nine o'clock before a red state from 2004 flipped blue. NBC's Chuck Todd was sounding grim about Virginia, although Florida looked good, but they wouldn't call it. Another good sign was that Indiana, which normally turns red at about five minutes past the poll close, was still too close to call.

But all of it didn't matter after Ohio turned blue at about 9:30. It was all over but the shouting then. For McCain to win, he would have to make up for it by stealing some blue states from 2004, and there just wasn't any place that was going to happen (the MSNBC crew, trying to postpone the inevitable, speculated, tongue firmly in cheek, that California or Hawaii could go McCain). I flew around the dial, seeing if other networks had called Ohio, and sure enough, they had (CNN seemed to take the longest, but when I saw a blue Ohio on Fox News' map, I knew it was over).

It wasn't official until 11:00, though, when the West Coast went blue instantly and Obama was declared the winner simultaneously by all networks. What an incredible rush! Then it was time for the momentousness of what had just happened sank in. As I flipped around the dial I saw that each network was allowing face-time to an African-American commentator, who could express the emotions of what they were seeing. Fox News' Juan Williams was eloquent and on the verge of tears. Congressman John Lewis, who was in the trenches during the Civil Rights era, seemed like he could hardly believe it. Jesse Jackson, the first black man to be a serious candidate for the office, was a face in the crowd at Chicago's Grant Park, tears streaming down his face. Many black people were no doubt thinking of those who came before them, of those who struggled to chip away at the prejudices of an evolving nation.

Even in my lifetime the advances are striking. When I was born there were large sections of this country where blacks had to use separate water fountains and couldn't share a swimming pool, where they were unseen on television and completely absent from the corridors of power. That Obama could overcome this obstacle in just this short time is mind-boggling. I would have thought that at the very least it would be a black vice-president first, in a slower progression to the White House, but this remarkable man, who two years ago was almost completely unknown, has accomplished the almost unthinkable.

I would like to compliment John McCain on a gracious and classy speech. Of course, there were the boorish contingent in the audience who for some reason feel compelled to boo, but McCain shushed them. If he had been more like this during the campaign he might have fared better. This is certainly it for him as a national candidate, one wonders whether he will run for re-election in 2010 for his Senate seat. It also may be the end for his generation--no one who was born during the lengthy FDR presidency has been elected president, and probably never will.

There are some lingering bad smells from last night, particularly a couple of senate races that are still in doubt, perhaps I'll get to them tomorrow.

The economy was the major issue, and I'm feeling that now as I prepare for a probably long stretch of unemployment. But to paraphrase Sam from Casablanca, "This takes the sting out of being unemployed."